


Orders

by Legume_Shadow



Series: Whispers (Prequels to the Echoes Series) [13]
Category: Peacemaker Kurogane, Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Conspiracy Shenanigans, Saitou and Hiko Just Took Over My Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-27
Updated: 2015-02-27
Packaged: 2018-03-15 11:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3444788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legume_Shadow/pseuds/Legume_Shadow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kondou and his men have received secret orders with regards to the problem known as Serizawa Kamo.  Far away from Kyoto, unbeknownst to them and the rest of the country, the ronin known as Sakamoto Ryouma discovers a set of orders that had been given long ago, and would have severely altered the course of history.  Orders are meant to be obeyed and broken, but only by those who choose to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orders

**Author's Note:**

> First Publishing: AO3, February 2015. All copyrights apply to the appropriate parties and no profit is being made from this fanwork.

**Part 12: Orders**

_September 1863_

 

“ _Remove Serizawa Kamo and only then, will I provide complete support upon you, Kondou Isami-san and your men.”_

 

Saitou glanced up from staring at the tatami mat as silence fell upon those in the room. The five of them had gathered here only a mere hour after Kondou had finished his secret meeting with Lord Matsudaira at the Aizu clan house. It had been Susumu who had alerted not only him, but Yamanami, Hijikata, and Okita via a falsified disturbance report in the general direction of their 'safe house'. The shinobi was now on the lookout, ensuring that any passerby who looked suspicious would not approach the ramshackle house that the five of them had sequestered themselves in.

While it would have been more natural to use a flower house or even the expensive tea houses of Gion as their meeting point, the risk of the entertaining women or anyone else overhearing their discussion was too great. It was more prudent and would give them a better cover in front of others of their group to look like they were responding to a disturbance rather than go out for drinks.

“Remove,” Yamanami said, pushing his glasses slightly up his nose with a finger, but did not elaborate on his statement.

“By force, if necessary,” Kondou answered his unspoken question.

“It will have to be by force,” Hijikata spoke up, lighting up his pipe before waving the match out. “All of you know that that man cannot be reasoned with.” Saitou watched as the tall man puffed on his pipe for a moment before saying, “We assassinate him.”

“What?!” Yamanami exploded, nearly lunging across the space that separated him and Hijikata, but aborted the movement to grab the man by the front of his clothes. “You can't be serious!”

“I am,” Hijikata stated, glaring at Yamanami. “Our lord has given us an order, and it is our duty to carry it out in full.”

“Kondou,” Saitou saw and heard Yamanami plead, looking towards their former dojo master who merely shook his head in silence. He saw the bespectacled man turn his eyes towards where he and Okita were sitting, but neither him or the young man gave Yamanami the answer he was looking for. He was firmly with Hijikata on the decision about what to do with Serizawa to remove him from power. It was the only way that they could ensure that not only did Serizawa not try to bring the group into the fold of rebels, but also stop the madness and ill will that was spreading across Kyoto whenever someone saw a Roshigumi patrol unit out and about.

“There is also the matter of the unknown woman in the flower house who was conspiring with Seirzawa,” Hijikata said after Yamanami sat back down, leaning against the wall in seemingly utter defeat of his protests.

“Souji?” Kondou asked, though Saitou could hear an underlying tone of concern in the man's voice.

In response to Kondou's unasked question, the young man merely shook his head negative. Though his own task in trying to further track down and identify just who was this 'Hitokiri Battousai' was, kept him busy, Saitou was well aware that Okita had continued his usual duties as Serizawa's shadowed hand. Those duties included the occasional visit to the particular Shimabara flower house where Oume and this unknown woman who aided Serizawa, lived. He knew not the particular woman that Okita visited upon before revelations of Serizawa's allegiance had been revealed, but knew that Okita returned to the flower house only to maintain the facade.

At least he was sure Okita was maintaining the facade, for he saw an inhuman glint in the young man's eyes when Yamanami suddenly asked, “Can we save the women, at least?”

It was the response to the unspoken statement that lingered in the room: in order to ensure that whoever Serizawa was working with and passing on information with regards to the Roshigumi at the flower house, they would have to kill all of the women at the flower house.

“Unfortunately, no,” Kondou replied, crossing his arms over his chest, giving a sympathetic look towards the bespectacled man.

“There are too many risks in keeping them alive. Without knowing who it was that Serizawa was passing on information, we do not know if the woman has reported to her or Serizawa's masters. Their masters may have contingency plans to kill us once they discover what we've done. We cannot allow that to happen.”

“But...” Yamanami began, though he faltered for a moment.

“Leaving loose ends would just come back to haunt us later.”

“Haunt?!” the bespectacled man hissed in anger that was laced with frustration at the situation. “Isn't it enough that we have to kill one of our own members?!”

“Yamanami, calm down,” Kondou interrupted the two as Saitou saw him spread his arms out, as if to prevent the two from getting up and drawing their swords.

However, Yamanami was not having any of it and continued to say, “Serizawa may have become arrogant and he _may_ be planning to transfer control of the Roshigumi over to Mito, but the fact is, he also saved us on more than one occasion. Is this how we repay him?”

“It's not as deep as that,” Hijikata said, removing the pipe from his mouth. “If you can use someone, use him. If he gets in the way, kill him. It's as simple as that. And in this case, we've used him to set our agenda in Kyoto _for the Shogun_ , and he has now gotten in the way of that.”

Saitou could not help but curl the edges of his lips into an involuntary smile as he heard Hijikata's words. Hijikata was right, for that was the purpose of anyone they encountered. It had taken a lot of effort for the Roshigumi to form and to petition the Shogun to be among those escorting him to Kyoto. To have their goals turned towards something that most of them did not agree with was going to tear them apart before they could even hope to become the most prominent patrol force in Kyoto. Honor and the slaying of evil men in the city was to be had, and Saitou was not going to let some person's agenda of supporting the rebels of all people, stand in the way.

Serizawa was useful with his influence, but now though, that usefulness of his was a liability.

“I volunteer to assassinate Serizawa,” he spoke up in the silence that had fell upon them. His words had caused the drooping, defeated, look that Yamanami had on is face to disappear as the man looked back up, his expression quite torn.

“As do I,” Okita quietly seconded.

“The four of us will,” Hijikata said, pointing at himself, Saitou, Yamanami, and Okita. “Kondou will be our new leader after Serizawa is dead. The Roshigumi name also dies with him when the assassination is carried out. We will not have that name staining our reputation longer than necessary.”

“I am honored by your suggestion to become the new leader of the soon-to-be-renamed group, Toshi,” Kondou said, bowing slightly.

However, before the former dojo master could say another word, Yamanami interrupted him, asking, “Why me, Hijikata? Why must I stain my blades with the rest of you?”

“Because,” Hijikata said after a moment of puffing on his pipe, “the ties that bind...”

Confused, but deciding that it would be better not to question the statement that Hijikata deigned not to finish as a strange look overcame Yamanami before he nodded and said not another word of protest, Saitou left the matter alone. He sensed that Hijikata and Yamanami had a long history and that this was only one in the many times in which the two's ideals clashed, but was not an insurmountable one that would fracture their friendship.

Friends was something that Saitou did not have, for he viewed the world at face-value; ruthless, merciless, and utterly unforgiving. However, he had comrades, and he knew that out of all those in the room, only Okita could be counted as a trusted and reliable comrade of his. The others; they were comrades, but they were his commanders, his leaders, and people who he would place his faith in to ensure that evil was instantly erased from this world.

* * *

Shortly after the deliberation of who would be attending to the assassination of Serizawa, along with the timing of when the deed should take place, the meeting ended. Yamanami left first, muttering something about spending some time with the woman he visited often, Akesato as an excuse for him being away from headquarters for so long. Saitou had merely stated that he would resume a patrol route around the area, and Kondou had opted to join him. That left only the final two of the five who had participated in this clandestine meeting.

“Souji,” Hijikata stated, keeping his voice short and curt as the last of the leaves in his pipe turned into ashes.

“Yes?” the young man answered in as neutral of a tone as possible, though there was nothing in his expression to give away what he felt about what had been said at the meeting.

“That woman at the flower house, Azami,” he said as he carefully watched Souji get up from where he had been sitting in the meeting and sit in seiza before him. “Do you love her?”

“I never did,” Souji answered after a few moments of silence.

Hijikata could not help but narrow his eyes slightly. There was absolutely no inflection or emotional tone in that statement. It worried him that even though he was still furious at the younger man for doing what he did as Serizawa's shadowed hand, and had provided all of them a wealth of information with regards to the coming and going of their leader, something was not right. Whatever shred of humanity Souji had come with to Kyoto was completely gone, and Hijikata suspected that it had all been stripped away from the young man by Serizawa.

There was an unexpected bark of laughter from Souji as he saw a sudden transformation take place and a smile was immediately back upon the young man's face as he exclaimed, “What is with that scary look, Hijikata-san?”

He blinked in surprise, utterly baffled as to how this strange change happened, but shook his head as he realized exactly what had triggered it. Souji was well aware of what he, Hijikata, was asking, but this, the cheerfulness that he had not witnessed in what felt like a long time, was a coping mechanism. He manged to keep the regret he felt about what not only he had done to the young man at such a young age, but also what Souji had thought he needed to do to help Kondou and the rest of them, from being expressed upon his face as he carefully schooled his expression into one of exasperation.

“Will you be able to kill any of them?” he asked after a moment, serious again.

“I will do what needs to be done, Hijikata-san,” Souji solemnly answered, the cheerfulness that had briefly appeared, disappear.

* * *

_Meanwhile..._

 

“Sakamoto,” Katsura began as soon as the tea was set down in front of them at the small shop, “about that message you wanted me to give to this Ichimura fellow a few months back...”

“Something terrible happened, didn't it?”

He sighed as he took a sip of his tea before looking back over at his friend. Even with what happened to the Tosa clansmen in Kyoto, especially with the arrest of Takechi Hanpeita and Okada Izou, there seemed to be a stubborn light in Sakamoto's eyes that did not die. That light, that positivity did not die, but it had dimmed quite considerably. Now, he was wondering if his news would be the one to extinguish that light.

“Katsura,” Sakamoto said, with a touch of impatience in the tone of his voice. “What happened?”

“The man that I sent into the mountains where Ichimura and his family lived found the burnt-out husk of their home. There's some partial overgrowth in the area, and from what my man said, it looks like it was burned down maybe a year or more ago. No one matching the description of the father, mother, or sons were seen for over a year. I'm sorry, Sakamoto, but I think your friend is dead.”

Sakamoto was quiet for a very long time before picking up his tea and took a sip from it. As the mug thunked back down on the table, Katsura heard him quietly say, “Thank you for the information.”

* * *

_A few days later..._

 

The downpour was not as heavy as it had been for the past few days with the afternoon showers that were common at this time of the year, but it was the humidity, even this deep and high in the mountains, saturating the air, that made it impossible to walk at a normal pace. Still, Sakamoto was used to the salty air of the sea and working in such harsh environments from his training at the Naval Academy that the humid late summer of the region did not bother him one bit.

It was only when he crested a hill to finally come face-to-face with the flat plains of this part of the mountains that he finally saw the devastation that had been wrought. Blackened beams of wood and walls were partially collapsed into a heap against each other, and what was left of the modestly-sized house for a family was already overgrown with so much weed and wild grass. Even the small path that had led up to the house was covered, leading Sakamoto to pull out his katana and start whacking at the tall grass.

Step by step, he swung his blade from side to side, cutting as best of a path as he could under the rain, as his feet squelched under the mud. It took him a while and just as he reached the house, the rains stopped. However, the sun did not come out as the low, grey clouds continued to hover in the sky. Pulling out a slightly damp cloth, he wiped his blade as best as he could before sheathing it.

Weeds had grown in sprouts on the ground as he stepped into the blackened area, carefully navigating his way around burnt sections. He could see blackened bones mixed with ashes peeking out of debris in the main room, mixed among the grass and flowers; Ichimura and his family had died in the main room. He had only been to Ichimura's house once before, just before his youngest son had been born, but Ichimura had shown him where the lockbox was kept. It was the contents inside of the lockbox, that held so many secrets and curiosity that he was looking for.

Ichimura only kept the lockbox with him because Sakamoto could not decipher it. The contents of the lockbox had made no sense until he had Ichimura look at it and the man had suggested that the papers contained in the box were encoded. Ichimura had ideas about how to break the coded missives, but did not have much time in between his day job and in the meetings with the moderates before he and his family had been killed. Sakamoto had let the man keep the lockbox, completely trusting the man to keep it safe, for something about the man who had given him the lockbox told him that once the missives were decoded, the country would never be the same again.

Now though, Ichimura and his family were dead, and reports could only attribute it to extremists who had killed the family. Sakamoto shook his head – Takechi Hanpeita could not have done this, for despite his strong professing of the _sonno joi_ ideal, the man had honor as a samurai to not go around wantonly killing random farmers in the mountains. No, someone else killed Ichimura, and despite wanting to go find who the killer was, Sakamoto knew that he did not have the time right now.

Rotted wood creaked beneath his feet as he headed towards the kitchen area of the house, carefully ducking across burnt beams of wood that were now covered in moss and wildflowers. The kitchen floor was covered in overgrowth and he could barely recognize any sort of semblance of what had been an in-ground hearth, along with a stone stove area to heat up pots.

However, it was not in these places that the item he was looking for, was located; it was in the middle of a former walking area within the kitchen that he knelt down and brushed is hand across. With the damp ground, it was muddy, as he started to pull weeds, grass, and wildflowers out of the ground, throwing them to the side. When the patch was cleared, he then proceeded to dig with his bare hands, throwing clumps of dirt towards the side and front of the area he was digging in, until he was nearly up to his elbows in the hole.

It was only then that he finally brushed against something hard and metallic. Digging around the item, he pulled it out after a few moments, slightly surprised at just how much strength he needed to lift the lockbox up, having long forgotten just how heavy it was. Forged from iron mined and constructed in China, it thunked back onto the ground, freed from its prison, and looked so ordinary that one would think that it was just a mere stool or some storage area for household goods. However, the simple construct did not fool him, for he knew what traps had been integrated into the design of the box if anyone attempted to pry it open without the correct key.

However, as Sakamoto peered back into the hole he had dug, he could see no sign of a key. Patting the dirt around where the box had been buried, he could not find the key that went with this box as worry crept into his stomach. Leaving the box where it was, he went back into what remained of the main room in the house and carefully removed several burnt beams and half-rotted partition doors that had fallen to the ground.

With a heavy heart, he stared at what remained of the Ichimura family, with only scattered ashes and pieces of bone remaining on the ground. Most of their remains that had not been devoured by the fire or by the earth was gone. What little remained would at least be buried by him. As his eyes traveled over the remains, he saw a small ring jutting out from the ground and gingerly picked it up, but that small bit of hope that had flared in his chest died as he saw that whatever remained of the iron key was gone. Only the hilt of the key remained.

Sighing, he threw the iron loop away and as carefully as he could, started to pick up what bones he could find in the area. When he was sure that there was no more to retrieve, he brought the handful that he had found back to the kitchen. It was not the best of graves that could be given, but it was the best he could make it. Placing the bones in the hole that had been made upon the extraction of the lockbox, he started dumping the dirt back into the hole.

When it was filled, he went outside to find some large stones and brought them back in. Placing the stones on top of the mound, he plucked some wildflowers and laid those on the graves. Closing his eyes for a few long minutes, he said a prayer up to the heavens, hoping the gods have been giving the Ichimura family a good afterlife in Enma.

The rain had started back up as soon as he had opened his eyes and picked the lockbox up. Holding the precious box close to him, he made his way out of the house and back down the mountain road. There was a man in the area that he heard of, having met him a long time ago before he had left for Edo to begin his studies at the Chiba dojo. The man had been a friend of his father's. The man had left his family the lockbox, asking that it be kept safe. The man had also given his father a key, asking for the box not to be opened unless word of his demise reached their ears.

Being a curious child, Sakamoto had opened it without his father knowing and found everything inside of it to be written quite strangely. Needless to say, his curiosity got the better of him and after he had completed his studies at the Chiba dojo and returned to Tosa, he had taken a look again in the lockbox. When he finally broke away from his family and left Tosa, the lockbox came with him, with he being determined to find someone to make sense of the contents, along with his other goals to change Japan.

Now though, without the key, if Ichimura had uncovered anything, it would never be known, unless the man who had given him the lockbox was still alive and willing to give him the second key. It was unusual for anything to have a second key that could be opened by two keys, but the construct of the box was already unusual in itself.

It was nearing nighttime when Sakamoto finally arrived at a small clearing that had a hut and stream flowing near by. As he approached the hut, the door swung open, spilling firelight out into the darkness as a looming figure stood in the doorway. He could feel a powerful _ken-ki_ emanating from the man at the door, but did not stop.

“Peace, stranger,” he said, holding up a hand as best as he could as he shifted the lockbox to his other arm. “I'm looking for a person and will be on my way if you are not the person that I am searching for.”

“What do you want?” the man said, the tone of his voice short and irritated.

“I heard that a man named Hiko Seijuurou lives in the area. Do you know where I can find him?”

The man was silent for a long moment and Sakamoto could feel a distinct chill crawl down his spine – he wished that he were not so encumbered that he could at least pull out his pistol, which was sitting against his right breastbone. The man in front of him was thoroughly searching him with just his eyes and Sakamoto knew that this man was not someone to be trifled with. Though he could see no sword on the man, it was the swordsman spirit that he felt coming off in waves that whispered caution in his mind.

“I am he,” the man said at last.

Sakamoto could only gape at the man for a moment, for even with the firelight backlighting him and shadowing his face, he could still see some features, and nothing that he could see told him that this was the same 'Hiko Seijuurou' that he remembered meeting before. Chuckling slightly, to ease his own tension and hopefully disarm the man slightly, he said, “You must be mistaken. I remember Hiko Seijuurou to be a tall, reed-thin man with wisps of white hair. You don't look like the man I remember seeing.”

“That man is dead,” the muscular man answered with a hint of anger in his voice. “What do you want, stranger?”

His face fell as he realized that not only was the man he knew as Hiko Seijuurou dead, but that this person had taken on the man's name. Could he trust this man? After a moment of thought, he knew that he could – just from the muscular man's inflection, he realized that Hiko Seijuurou must have been a dear mentor or someone of significant importance to this man. When Hiko Seijuurou had died, this man had taken on his name in memory. There was a slim chance, but Sakamoto banked upon it – perhaps this man who had claimed the name of Hiko Seijuurou knew where the second key to the lockbox was.

He held up the lockbox and said, “This was given to my family by Hiko Seijuurou. There was a key attached to this box, but it has been destroyed. He told us that there was a second key that he would keep safe with him and pass it to his apprentice, should anything happen to him. I do not know if you were Hiko-sensei's apprentice, but do you have an iron key that never seemed to lock or unlock anything?”

He could feel the eyes of the man before him bore into him for a few long minutes before the man abruptly turned and went back into the hut. “Come,” was all he heard issuing from the hut.

Taking tentative steps forward, he peeked into the hut and found the man sitting at the hearth, pushing a few pieces of embers around with a long branch. Deciding that he had been allowed to enter this man's home, he entered but stopped short of going further than the entrance as the man looked up and glared at him with piercing dark eyes. The lockbox was tightly tucked under his arm as something iron was suddenly thrown at him and clanked on the wooden floor before skidding to a stop.

“Take your damn key,” the man spat out as Sakamoto knelt down and gingerly picked up the iron key, “and get out of my sight. Don't ever return, even if you lose it. I have nothing to do with that organization or with whatever contents are contained inside of that box anymore.”

“Thank you,” he managed to politely say and gave a small bow before backing out of the hut.

Turning, he hurried away until he could no longer even see a glimpse of the hut, and even then, he continued on wards. It was only when the moon had risen to its zenith that he finally stopped at an abandoned animal cave and set down both the key and the lockbox. Gathering what firewood he could, he started a small flame and set the small blaze going. He knew that he should wait until the morning to even take a good look at what was inside of the lockbox, hoping that Ichimura had deciphered some of the content, but something about the man in the mountain hut's words made him apprehensive.

Placing the iron key inside of the lock, he turned it and heard a soft click, but did not take the key out. The lockbox was unique in that it required five clicks to be heard before anyone could open the box. Whereas most things that were locked only had one mechanism to lock and unlock, the box had five, and it required a steady and careful turning of the hand to ensure that all mechanisms fitted against the key at each point to successfully unlock. If someone forced the key to turn quickly, none of the mechanisms would catch.

Slowly cranking the key further in the counter-clockwise turn, he heard four more clicks and finally let the key go. Prying the cover open, firelight spilled into the box. While there was a few familiar-looking pieces of parchment written in gibberish, Sakamoto realized that there was at least one new piece of paper that had been added to the contents of the lockbox, and he could not help but smile. Ichimura had successfully translated a part of the puzzling, gibberish-filled documents.

Fishing the paper out, he unfurled it and stared at the words that had been written upon it, his smile instantly disappearing as he felt a yawning pit of dread open up in his stomach. Though it was only a partial translation, the words that had been written were more than enough to greatly concern him:

[ **Orders to the 12** **th** **Master of Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu: assassinate the Emperor in Kyoto and the Shogun in Edo.** ]

 

~*~*~*~

 

**Author's Note:**

> So with regards to the assassination of Serizawa Kamo. I know that PMK (both anime and manga) had the line up being: Hijikata, Kondou, Okita, and Yamanami. However, it didn't make sense to me to have the next leader of the Roshigumi/Shinsengumi be among those partaking in the mission. None of those against Serizawa would have risked their new leader potentially getting killed. Therefore, in the continuity of things (and of stuff making common sense), Saitou was substituted in place of Kondou.
> 
> As for Sakamoto Ryouma, as I have said before, my manga collection of Peacemaker and Peacemaker Kurogane is pretty patchy, and I happen to have not translated all of my copy of Volume 4 of PMK yet (me being lazy and having no time, due to real life), which features Sakamoto quite extensively. Since I'm using the anime as my base point, I felt that Sakamoto's personality and point in the series had not been fully fleshed out, and therefore, I decided to start fleshing out his personality in this series. I will be continuing to build upon that in the final multi-chaptered fic (Shadows) of the overarching series, Legends of the Revolution. For now, this short story is a sample of dark things to come.


End file.
